Four grown kids, five delightful grandchildren, constant, long-time partner. A retired academic, I've recently moved with my husband from a waterfront home on a very small (Canadian) West Coast island to a condo in the city (Vancouver). Still reading compulsively, though, and keen to discover what new priorities emerge, what interests persist in this urban life after 60!

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Richard Zimler's The Last Kabbalist in Lisbon

This past spring, in preparation for our trip to Lisbon, I read two novels set in that city, Pascal Mercier's Night Train to Lisbon and Robert Wilson's A Small Death in Lisbon, which between them gave me a sense of the sweep of 20th-century history in that city. In the plane from Lisbon to Heathrow on our way back, the airplane magazine mentioned Richard Zimler's The Last Kabbalist in Lisbon, and so I've just finished reading that. This historical mystery novel took me much further back, to the fifteenth century, and concentrated on the lives of a Jewish family living through the horrifying pogroms that accompanied the Inquisition. I would have enjoyed it even had we not visited the city and walked through the Alfama and seen remnants of the setting Zimler features. The plot is satisfyingly complicated, altho' there's perhaps a bit too much of the elimination approach to suspects. As well, the characters are interesting, convincing, individual, and even likeable. Mostly, though, the novel appears well-researched and gave me not only insight into the time along with some knowledge of kabbala and of manuscript illumination, but a very sensory experience of the foods and smells and sounds of street and home life. Value-added escape reading -- I'd recommend this one.

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About Me

Trying my best to age contentedly, if not enthusiastically. I taught piano and music theory (history, harmony, etc.) while my four children were young and then completed my BA once my youngest was in school. Then my MA, then my PhD (in Canadian Literature) and taught happily at a small university from which I'm recently retired. All made possible by a supportive husband. We've just moved from a small West Coast island to an urban condo (Vancouver, BC). Three daughters, a son, their partners, and five delightful wee grandchildren. Life's full!